(Bloomberg) — London is set to retain its position as the city with the greatest capacity in private data links, a lead that may help stem any erosion in the city’s position as Europe’s premier financial center, even after the U.K. leaves the European Union.
The U.K. capital currently has an installed bandwidth of 159 terabytes per second, a figure that exceeds any other European city and is greater than the capacities in either New York or Silicon Valley, according to a new report from Equinix Inc., a U.S. company specializing in data centers that host many of these private data connections.
The report, released Wednesday, forecasts that London will retain this lead, with its overall private bandwidth tripling to 486 terabytes per second by 2020.
Businesses are turning to private data networks due to the huge amounts of data they are now generating, where public internet connections may struggle, said Russell Poole, managing director of Equinix’s U.K. business.
The rapid transfer of data has long been of importance to the financial sector. Exchanges have been letting traders place their computer servers next to exchange systems — a practice known as colocation — in order to facilitate high frequency trading.
After telecommunications companies and firms that sell cloud and IT services, the banking and insurance sector is the largest user of private networks, Equinix said. And by 2020, the sector will exceed even those network-centric industries in its use

IO has officially launched a data center in Slough, just outside of London, the company announced Tuesday. This is the Phoenix-based colocation provider’s second data center outside the US and its first UK data center.

IO has officially launched a data center in Slough, just outside of London, the company announced Tuesday. This is the Phoenix-based colocation provider’s second data center outside the US and its first UK data center.

ePages, a Hamburg, Germany-based ecommerce company, has opened an office in Brooklyn to better develop and support partners in North America, according to an announcement on Monday. This is the company’s first new office since opening London and Barcelona in 2006. Ecommerce is booming. According to an eBay Enterprise report…

ePages, a Hamburg, Germany-based ecommerce company, has opened an office in Brooklyn to better develop and support partners in North America, according to an announcement on Monday. This is the company’s first new office since opening London and Barcelona in 2006. Ecommerce is booming. According to an eBay Enterprise report…

UK-based TelecityGroup and Netherlands-based Interxion are merging in a $2.2 billion deal creating one big European data center provider. Telecity will structure the deal as an offer for Interxion, with London, UK acting as primary home base.